investigations, which occurs all the time. if we get down the road, that s a decision that the attorney general sessions can make at the time. overseas now, iraqi forces continue to make progress as they advance deeper into western mosul. nbc news has now confirmed that eight neighborhoods have been fully liberated. joining us live from london, nbc news foreign correspondent lucy cavanaugh. a good morning to you, lucy. reporter: ayman, good morning. iraqi troops are reportedly making slow progress in pushing back islamic state fighters in the southern districts of western mosul, but much of this progress has been defending villages, the strategically important airport, the nearby military base. the real challenge will be pushing into western mosul proper. as you know, this is an ancient, dense part of the city. the streets are narrowed and winding. you can t get armored vehicles through them. that s exactly where the iraqi forces have weather have to do house-to-house combat.
combat? in that support role, they are allowed to defend themselves and also defend partner forces and to protect against the loss of innocent life, and that s what played out in this particular operation. reporter: and what exactly the mission is, and is that mission changing is a question that many are asking. u.s. troops have been operating in iraq for months now, advising and assisting iraqi kurds, advising and assisting the iraqi army, but their mission is not supposed to be in direct house-to-house combat, like the delta force commandos were in this mission. the u.s. military says it was a one-off, but others are asking how many more one-offs will there be in what will clearly be a very long war against isis. richard engel in iraq. thank you very much. and i want to take you back now to washington, d.c., where hillary clinton is up next at that podium right there at the
air forces and other things. we would have to go in and really defeat them among a population that s not part of isis. that s what makes it difficult. this will require not just street to street but house to house combat. if the u.s. objective is to degrade and ultimately destroy isis which the president says is the objective, but he says no u.s. combat ground troops who will degrade and ultimately destroy isis? it has to be iraqi security forces to include the peshmerga forces in the north. they will have to conduct the operation. what we will have to derltermine is how much support do they need. as this goes forward, we will make recommendations on how much support the u.s. needs to give to be successful. this will take time. this is not going to be a short-term issue. if you look at yemen, libya, the u.s. embassy shut down in
that unit i was with in that report, they said they were trying to go get in that area. they were trying to go and launch an offensive to take back a couple of houses. it s urban combat. they re doing house-to-house combat. it s very difficult. that s why they keep using the heavy weapons, to try and get in there. it s really unclear obviously still when you talk to people on the ground whether or not the government did it or the rebels did it. one thing that i think has become clear and we sent someone in to film video on the rebels side at ground zero where all of this allegedly happened, it s clear that something terrible happened here and it s clear that it involved some sort of toxic agent there because the pictures we got back from our people were absolutely clear on that, john. the president one of the things he s saying is look at the videos. he s telling the american people and the people around the world, look at the videos that come out from there. use your common sense. j
this area has seen some of the fiercest fighting in the damascus area. we went straight to the front line to see the house-to-house combat there. we re on the front line with palestinians fighting for the assad regime. snipers do much of the fighting and death can come any second. this is a pro-government sniper position. this fighter just told me he sees a sniper through his scope through-fro from here. we ll wait and see what happens. the man said that took out a rebel fighter. pro government fighters tell me like on other front lines in